Profile: Robert C. Odle, Jr

Robert C. Odle, Jr was a participant or observer in the following events:

Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein asks a former Nixon administration official about some of the White House officials who may have connections to the Watergate burglary (see 2:30 a.m.June 17, 1972). Bernstein notes that the Nixon presidential campaign committee (CREEP) has identified its personnel director, Robert Odle, as the man who hired Watergate burglar and CREEP security director James McCord (see June 19, 1972). “That’s bullsh_t,” the official retorts. “[Committee director John] Mitchell wouldn’t let go of a thing like that. Mitchell would decide, with advice from somebody who knew something about security.” Mitchell would almost certainly have brought in at least one more aide, Frederick LaRue (see March 20, 1971), Mitchell’s right-hand man. “I would expect that if any wiretaps were active up to the time of the break-in, LaRue would have known about them,” the former official tells Bernstein. A Republican National Committee member tells Bernstein that McCord has, contrary to a statement by RNC chairman Bob Dole, never done any security work for the RNC. “All they care about at CREEP is Richard M. Nixon,” the RNC official says with some bitterness. “They couldn’t care less about the Republican Party. Given the chance, they would wreck it.” The RNC official says he and Dole had discussed the likelihood of White House involvement in the Watergate burglary, and they both believed that it was likely managed by “one of those twenty-five cent generals hanging around the committee or the White House who was responsible. [Murray] Chotiner or [Charles] Colson. Those were the names thrown out.” (Chotiner, well-known for his low-road brand of politics—see 1950—will never be proven to have had any involvement in the Watergate conspiracy.) [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 28-29]

Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein manages to land a meeting with a low-level employee of the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP); like the other employees he and his colleague Bob Woodward have interviewed, she is frightened (see August, 1972), but more willing to speak out. Meeting - The employee insists that they meet for lunch in a public restaurant frequented by CREEP personnel, so that she will not seem as if she is meeting clandestinely with a reporter. Bernstein asks if she is not being overdramatic, and she responds: “I wish I was. They know everything at the committee. They know that the indictments (see September 15, 1972) will be down in a week and that there will be only seven. Once, another person went back to the [district attorney] because the FBI didn’t ask her the right questions. That night her boss knew about it. I always had one institution I believed in—the FBI. No more.” Does Not Think Story Will Come Out - She also went back to the DA, she says, but has no faith that the story will ever come to light. “It’ll never come out, the whole truth. You’ll never get the truth. You can’t get it by reporters just talking to the good people. They know you’ve been out talking to people at night. Somebody from the press office came up to our office today and said, ‘I sure wish I knew who in this committee had a link to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.’ The FBI never even asked me if I was at the committee over the weekend of the break-in. I was there almost the whole time. [Robert] Odle [CREEP’s personnel director] didn’t tell them everything he knew. He kept removing records. I don’t know if he destroyed them or not. He would tell everybody to get out of the room and then close the door. Then he’d leave with the records.… The whole thing is being very well covered up and nobody will ever know what happened.” Names Named - As Bernstein walks her back to her office—again, to avoid the appearance of trying to hide her contact with the press—she adds: “Okay, I’ll tell you, but it won’t do any good. And don’t ever call me, or come to see me or ask any questions about how I know. LaRue, Porter, and Magruder. They all knew about the bugging, or at least lied to the grand jury about what they know. And Mitchell. But Mitchell is mostly speculation. Take my word on the other three. I know.” Frederick LaRue, Bart Porter, Jeb Magruder, and John Mitchell are all former White House officials who moved over to work for CREEP. Discovered - Later that afternoon, Bernstein receives a phone call from the woman, who is near hysteria. “I’m in a phone booth,” she says. “When I got back from lunch, I got called into somebody’s office and confronted with the fact that I had been seen talking to a Post reporter. They wanted to know everything. It was high up; that’s all you have to know. I told you they were following me. Please don’t call me again or some to see me.” That evening, Bernstein and Woodward go to her apartment; she refuses to open the door. Shortly thereafter, CREEP director Clark MacGregor calls Post executive editor Ben Bradlee to complain that Bernstein and Woodward have been harassing his employees. [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 60-62]

Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein interviews a reluctant source, a bookkeeper for the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP). In All the President’s Men (see June 15, 1974), Bernstein and co-author Bob Woodward merely identify her as “The Bookkeeper” [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 63-68] , but she will later be identified as Judy Hoback. Hoback tries to persuade Bernstein to leave her apartment, but Hoback’s sister, who is also present, seems supportive of Bernstein, and the reporter tries to find ways to stay and winkle information out of Hoback. But Hoback seems willing to play along with Bernstein to an extent. She will not provide damaging information against her boss, Maurice Stans, but otherwise she says she wants the truth to come out. She says the top officials at CREEP have decided to try to pin the blame for everything on former CREEP treasurer Hugh Sloan, for whom she feels great sympathy. She confirms that documents have been destroyed to prevent investigators from finding the truth behind the financial improprieties, and confirms the existence of a secret campaign “slush fund,” saying that CREEP deputy director Jeb Magruder was one official in charge of managing the fund. In a subsequent interview conducted by both reporters, Hoback confirms that G. Gordon Liddy received cash from the fund, as well as CREEP scheduling director Bart Porter. She confirms that several CREEP officials, including personnel director Robert Odle, lied to the investigating grand jury. Like so many other CREEP employees, Hoback has no faith that the FBI is conducting any sort of impartial investigation: “My feeling is that the FBI turns the information in and it goes upstairs,” presumably to the White House. Although Hoback’s information is more tantalizing than useful at the moment, Bernstein and Woodward will use her statements as confirmation for other, subsequent allegations. [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974; Woodward, 2005, pp. 228]

The Senate Watergate Committee begins its first day of public hearings. The hearings are televised starting May 18. [Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, 7/3/2007] Washington Post legal analyst Jules Witcover writes that the first day of hearings is as dramatic as “watching grass grow.” The witnesses, beginning with Robert C. Odle, director of administration for the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), insist that neither he or any of his colleagues knew of any illegal activities, and did not learn of the Watergate burglary (see 2:30 a.m.June 17, 1972) until seeing news reports of the five burglars’ arrests. He says that when he saw CREEP security consultant James McCord was one of the five, his first thought was that he would have to find a replacement for McCord. Odle does say he saw another Watergate conspirator, G. Gordon Liddy, shred a large stack of documents the same day as the burglary, but thought little of it. Other witnesses, particularly two of the police officers who made the initial arrests, add little to the fund of knowledge already possessed by Watergate observers. Witcover writes that the senators on the committee, led by Senator Sam Ervin (D-NC), engage in little or no “showboating” for the cameras. Witcover predicts that when McCord and other witnesses begin testifying, the hearings should “heat up.” [Washington Post, 5/18/1973]

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